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Scott Taylor: New assault rifles finally on order for Canadian military

Expenditure helps meet defence spending goal

On March 19, just ahead of the federal government’s fiscal year deadline of March 31, the Department of National Defence announced a major purchase of new assault rifles for the Canadian Army.

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The $307-million price tag for the first batch of what are known as Canadian modular assault rifles (CMARs) will help push last year’s defence spending to the NATO alliance’s goal of two per cent of gross domestic product.

Close observers of the Canadian military will know that although former prime minister Stephen Harper had promised at a NATO summit in 2014 to reach two per cent of GDP on defence spending, that goal was never met. In fact, under the Harper government defence spending dipped below one per cent.

Following the election of the Justin Trudeau Liberals in 2015, additional funding was allocated to the Defence Department. However, at the start of the 2025-2026 fiscal year, it only planned to spend 1.3 per cent of GDP on national defence.

That was before the inauguration to a second term for U.S. President Donald Trump. To justify a tariff war and support his threats of annexing Canada into becoming his 51st state, Trump bemoaned a lack of border security and highlighted our “shirking” when it came to defence spending.

Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke defiantly of getting Canadian “elbows up” with regard to the tariffs.

However, as an act of appeasement to Trump, the Carney Liberals leased a couple of helicopters to demonstrate their willingness to secure an already secure border.

On the issue of defence spending, Carney vowed in June 2025 that Canada would balloon defence spending to $93.3 billion to reach two per cent of GDP within that fiscal year. It was a tall order for a dangerously under-strength Canadian Armed Forces that struggles to administratively procure already-contracted hardware.

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Thus, Carney made some clever moves to boost the defence ledgers.

A major one was to simply transfer the Canadian Coast Guard from Fisheries and Oceans Canada to national defence. While this did not actually increase Canada’s defence capability, it made sense to add this expenditure to our defence budget. The U.S. and many NATO allies consider their coast guards a branch of their armed forces.

In my opinion, this was a long overdue restructuring. Whether or not Canada chooses to actually arm the coast guard with some serious weaponry remains open to debate.

Another boost to the defence budget was a sizable pay increase for all personnel, with the largest percentage increases made to the lowest ranks. Once again, this did not add a single bayonet or bullet to Canada’s defence but it did improve the sagging morale of our understrength combat forces.

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As for the March 19 assault rifle purchase announcement, this was long on the wish list of the Canadian Army. Squeezing it in before the fiscal year deadline was only a matter of bringing the project forward by a few years.

In total, the army intends to purchase 65,402 Canadian modular assault rifles to replace the existing stocks of C-7 rifles and C-8 carbines presently in service.

The C-7s and C-8s first entered service in the mid-1980s, so there will be very few who would argue against our military modernizing their basic personal weapons after four decades.

The $307-million contract is for the first 30,000 CMARs, and these will be general service rifles.

The delivery timeline will see the new weapons entering service over the next three years. The remainder of the contract goes into effect in 2030 and this will see the purchase of 19,207 additional general service variants along with 16,195 full-spectrum models.

The full spectrum versions are designed specifically for frontline combat and urban warfare.

The second tranche of this rifle procurement will bring the total dollar figure closer to the $1-billion mark.

The good news is that these assault rifles will be built by Colt Canada in Kitchener, Ont. According to a Defence Department news release, over 80 per cent of the components used in these rifles will be produced in Canada.

There is also the caveat that this contract could still be expanded by an additional 300,000 units if plans move forward to create a supplementary reserve. That plan was first reported in the Ottawa Citizen in November.

According to an internal briefing note, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan and then-deputy minister Stefanie Beck had created a team to study the creation of a 300,000-strong supplementary reserve based on a core element of civil servants. The proposed force would have one week of basic training and an annual one-week refresher course.

While there is no plan to issue uniforms to these reservists, it is expected that they will be armed. In which case, that will be good news for Colt Canada.

Not so much for the untrained volunteer reservists who will be expected to handle these new weapons.

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